Beltane Pt 1
by fury-shashka
Summary: This. Is. Shite.' Ginny’s voice was grumpy and so very, very taut." One-shot.


**Hello all. I realise that it's fairly far off from Beltane, but too bad, so sad. This is a one-shot, but there will be a second piece that will accompany it - eventually. So far, that second piece is proving a little more difficult to write because of the pairing - kudos to you if you have an inkling of what that pairing might be. Also, there is a poll that I have posted on my profile, so go check it out.**

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"This. Is. Shite."

Ginny's voice was grumpy and so very, very taut.

Luna turned to her with a discerning look on her pale face.

"You said you _wouldn't_ be grumpy." The firm words contrasted with the melodious, higher pitch of her voice.

One Luna Lovegood—older, less airy, more persuasive in her aims—had convinced one Ginny Weasley to come out for a very perkily-worded "Beltane celebration!" and somehow Ginny had conceded.

It wasn't that she was against Luna's desires—the two of them were fast friends, really. They had once been roommates, and even though they were now living separately, making enough money to do so, they still saw each other at least three times a week. They talked via Floo. They wrote smirking notes to each other and delivered them at odd times of the night. They drank wine. They laughed at their differences.

They _were_ different. They were so different, and it was times like _this_, like _these_, that Ginny ground her teeth about it the most.

But they got along, they did. The differences worked—they seemed to work.

Luna was spiritual, in a way. She was airier than Ginny, the breeze to Ginny's sparked, matter-of-fact fire. She dressed in long skirts that Ginny could never hope to pull off, skirts that clung to her slender birch-tree legs, to her delicate ankles. She was taller than Ginny, always had been, wore her hair down—hair that never seemed to get tangled, whereas Ginny's hair was always tangled around her neck, down her back, snarled so angrily that she couldn't even comb fingers through. And Luna paid attention to _things_—things like radishes, and the phases of the moon, and the colours of people's eyes, things like the important Pagan holidays.

And she had rushed to Ginny's front door at a ridiculously late hour, had knocked and murmured mellifluously until Ginny had answered, sleep-eyed and wrapped in a robe, had raved and raved about the "first proper wizarding Beltane ritual that has ever been" until Ginny had finally shoved her out of the doorway amidst promises to accompany her.

Ginny sighed, and picked at her skirt.

Luna had dressed her, grousing at Ginny about her "boring fashion sense" and had stripped off all of Ginny's sensible clothes—a pair of khaki pants, a pair of brown leather knee high boots, a white button-down shirt—and had instead draped her in green. _Green_—the colour that Ginny tended to stay away from because of the brilliant red of her hair—green. Luna had wrapped a scarf around Ginny's bare breasts and stomach, over and over again, until the sheerness of it became a solid emerald, and had made her step into a filmy, green skirt.

"No underwear."

Normally, Ginny would have protested such an odd statement—from anyone else, it would have been disquieting—but she simply sighed and let Luna toss her knickers into the closet, secretly admitting to herself that the delicate material of the dress did look better without the lines of her pants.

And now they were standing in a bloody field.

Luna was beside her, resplendent in red, her hair pulled back, falling light and hot down her back, a high blush splashed across her cheeks. Her eyes were so lively, so excited, that Ginny could hardly bear to be snarky.

Hardly.

"Well, that was before I was standing nearly knee-deep in wet grass, Luna."

Ginny looked down at her legs. The skirt was dampened, clinging to her skin, and she shuddered at the feeling. She hated the clammy feel of wet _things_ sticking to her. It irritated her skin.

Luna was looking down the hill in front of them at the fires that were being stoked. When she answered, she didn't even look over at Ginny.

"It'll dry."

"Where are we, anyway?" Ginny was looking around, trying to find some distinguishing characteristics of the lea they were in. It was a large clearing of sorts, surrounding by a very thick ring of trees, and they were at the edge of it, looking down the hill in front of them at a grand circle of soft grass, of other bodies milling about, of big fires being built, being stoked.

Even from where they were, laughter wafted up on the breeze towards them.

Luna closed her eyes and seemed to inhale it.

Ginny allowed her a moment of savouring, and then exhaled impatiently, drawing Luna's attention back.

"We're at a Designated Celebration Area. You remember the bill passed by the Ministry—a year or so ago?" Luna's eyes were still closed. "That there had to be areas set aside around the United Kingdom for traditional magick celebrations to take place within."

"Oh yes," Ginny muttered. "To help 'bring history to life.'"

"This is the one in Wiltshire. It was put together by a few anonymous donors and the Ministry." Luna opened her eyes. "It's warded. Muggles can't get in. So exciting. Not that Muggles can't get in, I mean—but that it's here. And official. And everything is being celebrated."

Ginny resisted the urge to roll her eyes and instead nodded tersely.

"You look beautiful, you know." Luna was looking at her, her eyebrows raised.

"_You_ look beautiful."

Luna laughed, something like bells. "You never take a compliment. Maybe you can find someone to compliment you tonight."

"I'm not fucking someone in the forest, Luna Lovegood." Ginny's voice was firm but tempered with a smile.

"That's not what Beltane is _all_ about," Luna began.

"But it's a part of it," Ginny finished.

They looked at each other.

"It would do you good to lighten it up a little, Ginny. Just give in to the fertility of this whole day." Luna had taken on a slightly dreamy expression.

Ginny was silent.

"I have our masks." Luna was reaching into her pockets.

"_What?_"

Luna held out a leafy, green mask. "We have to wear masks. The sponsors figured that because the wizarding word is so small, nobody would truly get into the spirit of things if we could all see each other's faces. And they're so beautiful. I made ours. See?" Luna held one up on the tip of her forefinger. "It's to represent the green man. _Fertility_!"

Ginny stared for a moment with wide eyes, and then snatched the mask out of Luna's hand, fastening it around her head rapidly, as though she were scared she was going to lose her nerve.

"But our hair—people can still see our hair, Luna."

Luna was putting on her own mask. "It's dark. People will be dancing and drinking. No one will notice." She finished tying the ribbons, looking up at Ginny, and then smiled. "Shall we go down?" Luna extended her hand, and Ginny hesitated for a moment, and then reached out swiftly, clasping fingers, and they started to walk, ungainly, down the knoll.

---

Ginny stood at the edge of the clearing, not too near to the forbidding-looking trees, but far enough away from the flames to feel safe.

She had let Luna wander off, feeling guilty for hindering her fun—Luna had wanted to dance, to run her palms over the grass, and Ginny had wanted to sit at the edge of the clearing, had wanted to keep her hair bound back, her skirt hung low. And so Luna had gone off to properly feel the drums, to let her hair hang down her back, to laugh.

Ginny watched the fires—not quite melancholy, but feeling oddly bereft. She felt detached, but she just couldn't bring herself to prance around.

She hadn't noticed the male figure that had moved up to her, now standing beside her, arms crossed, his eyes surveying her through his mask.

Eventually she registered that she wasn't alone when the movement of his forearms caught the light of the moon, and the whiteness of his skin glinted, startling her into total awareness. He uncrossed his arms, slid his hands into the waistband of his linen pants, hooking them there. Ginny resisted the urge to start at the new presence, but instead turned slowly, surveying her new neighbour.

He wasn't looking at her. He was staring ahead at the revelry, his eyes almost invisible behind the cover of his facemask. She couldn't see the colour of them—not at this angle—but she could see the cords of his neck, the set of his jaw—_the set of his jaw_? He seemed almost uncomfortable with the whole celebration, almost as she was, and she wondered if that was why he was out here, with her, on the edge of everything.

He looked toward her, suddenly, and Ginny smiled small. She recognised a kindred spirit even in the maelstrom of orange and green carnivalesque festivities.

He stared at her for a moment and then smiled back, briefly.

She felt content, for a moment. She wasn't alone in her aloneness—in her slow and cool refusal to totally take part in this celebration. There was at least someone else who was kith, who was taciturn like her.

Ginny felt a little bit of warmth curling up in her chest, and she felt happy with her new acquaintance.

Then he moved to look over his shoulder briefly and it was then that the light fell properly on his head.

She caught the striking glint of white-blond hair—_white-blond hair_—and all of a sudden a thousand trilling warning bells set off inside of Ginny's stomach, and she realised that she recognised the lithe set of the body, the fluidity of the wrists, the hardened thighs—the hair. The bloody hair.

Draco. _Fucking_. Malfoy.

She thought, desperately, for a sweet moment, that maybe it was someone else, that she was wrong, that there was someone else who had their light hair shorn like that, cut close in the back, combed back in the front, but she knew deep down that the corded wrists and the long, long legs—it was him.

"_Malfoy_?" Ginny's voice was hissing and low.

He turned to look at her, and she could see the set of his jaw again, and it was in that moment that she had no doubt that it was him, and that he was not well pleased that someone had caught him out—he had probably figured that most people were drinking, or caught up in dancing, or just intoxicated with the spirit of the event—

"Who the _fuck_ are you, then?" His voice was harsh, and before she could back away, he had shoved his own facemask up and had grabbed at hers, tearing it off of her face so quickly that some of the lustrous and long strands of her red hair were caught in the ribbons that she had tied.

"That _hurt_," Ginny snarled, lunging at him and grabbing her mask back.

No mistaking it—it was Draco Malfoy, through and through. His mask sat up on his forehead, making it look as though he had another set of eyes, and it might have been a humourous effect had she not been so embarrassed and so livid at his violent action, his taking of her mask.

"I should have known it was you with that pointy little nose of yours," she mumbled, her shoulders sagging a little.

Draco lowered his head in order to raise his eyebrows and meet her eyes full on. "And I should have known it was you with that awful shock of orange hair, Weaslette."

Suddenly Ginny felt very tired. She was not going to fight with him. She was not—they were older, now. They were older and they were adults and he was still a smarmy fucking pillock but she was not going to waste any more of her rapidly dwindling energy on him.

Ginny sat down on the ground, uncaring of the dampness across her bum.

Draco furrowed his brow at her odd action.

She fell back into the grass, flopping her arms out to the side, looking back up at the stars. Maybe if she just lay there, admiring the exquisite blanket of a sky—she could pretend that this farce of a night didn't happen—_wasn't_ happening.

"What the _fuck_ are you doing, She-Weasel?"

No such luck.

Ginny shut her eyes.

"We're grown ups, Draco. You think you could stop using fucking nicknames."

If he was surprised at the usage of his first name, she couldn't see it.

There was silence.

When Ginny cracked one eye open to see if he had left her alone, she saw him still towering over her, his arms crossed over his chest.

She sighed. It seemed as though she was going to have to deal with the problem, instead of ignoring it. No matter—she had always been good at meeting things head-on. "What are you doing here anyway?"

Draco looked as though he were debating whether or not to answer the question, and then he dropped his arms to his sides heavily, and, to Ginny's surprise, sat down beside her on the ground.

"The ground is wet," he mumbled snarkily, and Ginny grinned, unable to stop herself. He shot a look over at her, scowling, but he sat still, and she propped herself up on her elbows beside him, looking up at his face.

He looked interesting in the moonlight. His features were sharp—she hadn't been lying about the pointed topography of his face—but they were fascinating to look at—the patrician line of his nose, the clear indentation of his philtrum, the stark and remarkable lushness of his mouth along the curve of the Cupid's bow, the lower lip.

Ginny made a sound of appreciation.

He turned to look at her. "What?"

She surprisingly felt no shame at having been practically caught at cataloguing his features. Instead of blushing, Ginny arched her eyebrows, clicking her teeth together in a little rhythm. "Are you going to answer my question?"

Draco blew out his breath. "Well, yes. Fine." There was a beat of silence, and Ginny looked questioningly at him. He grimaced, suddenly, and the facial movement was so unlike the smug Malfoy that she had known back in school that she was struck. "My father is one of the sponsors. He likes the—_hedonistic_ aspect."

She was quiet for a moment, and then she threw her head back and laughed, laughed up to the great bowl of a sky, laughed the stars out of the black. Ginny laughed until she had to lift her head up to breathe, and that was when she noticed that Draco was looking at her oddly.

"What's so funny, Weasley?"

Ginny struggled briefly, sitting up fully, sitting cross-legged and turning to Draco. "You mean to tell me that Lucius Malfoy—the man who helped to introduce me to Voldemort—is somewhere in the midst of everyone here, wearing a pair of pants made out of bloody _leaves_, dancing around a _fucking fire_?" Her voice was part shrill and part breathless with laughter.

Draco stared for a moment, one corner of his mouth lifted slightly.

"Yes."

"Oh, god. I am going to kill Luna." She dropped her head into her hands.

"Loony's here?"

"Don't call her that," Ginny snapped harshly, raising her head from her hands.

Draco looked briefly taken aback, but recovered. "Fine." His voice was peevish.

Another small change, another small victory—a few years ago he would have laughed in her face, used worse names to talk about her and Luna, made lewd comments about their body parts, their mouths, their legs—insulted them harshly—but now he had conceded.

"She's here because she was so excited about the 'first real wizarding version of Beltane' or some other shite like that."

Draco looked thoughtful. "Lovegood wants to go fuck in some bushes badly, _hm_?"

It was too surreal. Ginny burst out laughing again. She was sitting in some damp grass, at the edge of a clearing, next to a foreboding looking forest, wearing absolutely nothing under her skirts, with Draco Malfoy next to her—and the two of them were actually having a decent conversation.

"Maybe she does," Ginny said. "She should go find your father."

Draco arched his eyebrows, his mouth turning down at the corners, and that made her laugh a little harder.

Ginny eventually quieted down, her laughter dissolving like sugar. She looked down at the grass between them, looking at the bulbs of their hands beside each other, her long fingers curled in the deepness of the grass. She noted the length of his fingers, the knobbed knuckle joints, the pale tips, hard nails.

He had nice hands.

When she looked up, she noticed that his eyes were hovering around the area of her chest, and Ginny realised, with embarrassment, that because of the chill, and the thinness of her 'shirt', and the fact that Luna had demanded that she leave all undergarments at home, that her nipples had hardened in the night air.

And now Draco was looking at them with an unreadable expression on his face.

She crossed her arms over her chest, staring at him until he looked back up at her. When he did so, she found that she couldn't read his expression still—it seemed as though he was deep in thought.

A couple ran by them, holding hands, their giddy laughter clattering. Ginny watched them go by with a mix of wistfulness and cynicism.

"Deviants," she whispered, but her heart wasn't truly in it.

Draco was closer to her than she had anticipated. "Deviants?"

"I don't know how fucking in the forest helps add to this holiday," Ginny said, slightly uncomfortable with being so rude with him, but also oddly curious about what his thoughts on the subject were.

"It's not _fucking_, Weasley," he said, his voice imbued with a smirk. "It's a consummation of the god and goddess. Don't you know _anything_?"

Ginny turned to him to retort, and found that he was close to her, watching her.

"I know lots of things," she said, almost haughtily, ready to keep talking, to keep building up her bluffing.

That was when he kissed her.

It wasn't the stuff of dreams, really. It felt, briefly, like an adolescent kiss. It was fast, hard. He moved forward, and kissed her swiftly on the mouth, and she didn't even get a chance to dart her tongue out and taste his lips when he was pulling back.

Draco looked a little startled that he had done what he had just done. Ginny brought the back of her hand up to her cheek, feeling the flush.

They stared for a second. She realised that her teeth were set in an odd grimace.

"Why aren't you dancing?" His voice rent the thickness of the quiet.

Ginny glared at him. "Do I look like the dancing type to you?"

"Yes," he said, his voice firm, and the fierceness of the word shocked her.

"Sod off, Malfoy." Her cheeks felt reddened, and she was suddenly thankful for the night and the darkness.

"No, you sod off." It was an immature response, and he knew it, but she had the feeling that he was being playful, in a way. She didn't look over at him. She stared ahead into the darkness, listening to the cacophony of laughing and sex sounds and drums.

"Why are you here?" His words were sudden.

Ginny looked at him. "I told you. Luna brought me."

"Why are _you_ here?" He repeated the question, his head tilted very slightly to one side, his hands splayed out on the grass beside his body, and Ginny was suddenly flushed, silent, aware of the smell of him—saline and green and wet. She closed her eyes and let her head hang back, the weight of her tangled hair off of her shoulders, down between the blades of her back, and she could feel his eyes on her even as she shifted her legs, stretching them out further in front of her, the skirt riding up to her knees.

He moved toward her again, and she was reminded of a wild animal doing a sort of mating dance, the wary dart and peck of it, and then his mouth was on her neck for an instant, and he was biting at her just hard enough to bruise, and then he was pulling back—again.

She didn't answer his question, bringing fingertips up to touch at the spot he had just left.

He didn't seem to need her to.

Because the air had changed, really—all of a sudden, just like a surprise, and now it was glittering with something odd, something thickened, something that coiled in Ginny's gut, and maybe in Draco's, and made her wonder—

Draco stood, suddenly, and Ginny opened her eyes, surprised by the gracefulness and rapidity and absolute _silence_ of his movement. When she stared dumbly up at him, he reached down and grabbed her wrists, and yanked sharply on them, pulling her body up to standing as well.

Ginny remained silent, resisting the urge to say something caustic or loud, instead watching his face as they stood eye-to-eye. He looked slightly surprised even at his own actions.

"My stupid bloody father," he muttered, and she didn't ask him what he meant, didn't need him to clarify, only went along with it all as he tugged on her wrists again.

She was amazed that her feet followed him into the dark edge of the trees that surrounded the clearing. She was amazed that she followed him deeper and deeper into the woods, not scared of her alien surroundings but instead revelling in the quiet hush of the dark and the wood, so far away from the thumping revelry of the fires.

When he stilled, his chest was moving slightly from the effort of stepping over the logs, the fallen branches, the velvety patches of moss that Ginny had noticed he hadn't wanted to destroy by stepping on them.

Draco Malfoy—forest conservationist.

She smiled to herself, and he noticed the smile, a sly curving of the lips, and even in the dark he could find where her mouth was, and when she leaned to meet him their teeth clicked for a second, and she laughed into him, and then he had pushed her up against a broad tree, and she breathed.

It had been a long time since Ginny had been kissed—maybe that was what accounted for her surliness, her inability to dance properly—that some integral part of her being was underfed, malnourished, crying out for some sort of attention.

And wasn't it _funny_, wasn't it just hilarious that it was Draco Malfoy who heeded the siren call?

But she wasn't laughing now, not as he pressed her hard against the tree. The forest was quiet but also not—from deep within she could still hear the sounds of other lovers—maybe—it was hard to tell with her blood pounding in her ears, and with his hands now—

Now on her hips.

She wanted to take the reins, somewhat—had had enough of being the passive one, and so she grabbed his wrists fiercely in her own hands and brought his palms up to her breasts, to the hardened nipples that he had been so attracted to earlier, and the touch of his fingertips to her helped allay the questions that were galloping through her mind.

His mouth left hers and he bit harshly at her neck, and her hands came down to her top. She loosened the piece that Luna had tucked under, and pushed his head off of her, handed it to him.

Draco stared at it.

"What—"

But then she started to spin away from him, and somehow she didn't even fall over any of the stumps scattered across the forest's floor, and her top was unravelling, her breasts out in the cool forest air, and his body showed comprehension in the set of it, and she could not see his face for the dark, and then he nearly ran the few steps towards her, throwing the shawl to the ground.

Draco sucked on her nipples with the temerity of a fifteen-year-old boy, making sounds of utter pleasure.

The darkness was odd and also unreal—hands that would so unerringly find the under-curve of a breast in the light were now more cautious, feeling along acres of skin.

She had goose bumps all over, and when the heat of his fingers dipped into the waist-band of her skirt, she brought her own hands down to shove it off of her hips.

Ginny felt like she had been ignited.

Draco made as if to brush his fingers between her legs but she grabbed his hand out of the way, snarling something at him, and he seemed momentarily surprised at her animalistic reaction. They had moved farther from their starting place, stumbling through the darkened thick of the trees, and Ginny would have normally been anxious—anxious that her top was lost somewhere on the forest floor, anxious that Draco Malfoy was now pulling off his own pants, tossing them somewhere unidentifiable, anxious that they were soon going to be so vulnerable, so unaware—

When she got down on all fours, the heels of her palms and her knees sinking slightly in the fragrant, damp earth, he didn't even say anything. Maybe he was too struck to—because she was sure that even in the murk of the night he could still see the gleaming pale of her skin, the curve of her buttocks, the curtain of red down over her back.

She felt the heat of his body behind her before she heard him move, and then it was the head of his cock at her entrance, just lightly—he was testing her, probing, seeing if she was wet enough, if she was turned on enough to take him.

She was.

And he must have sensed this because he pushed inside of her so slowly that Ginny didn't have space in her brain to question her sanity, being there on all fours on the forest floor in the darkness with Draco sliding determinedly and silently inside of her, his thickness burning.

Of course there was pain. It had been so long.

But she relished it, relished the soft catch of his breath when he was all the way in, his reaction to her tightness, the only smugness he would afford her.

Because then he was pushing down, hard, on her shoulders, and she was sinking to the forest floor, her breasts down on the moss and the dirt, the earth cushioning her, and her hips followed suit, and her face was so close that she could smell the sweetness of the earth.

He followed her down, still inside of her, and his hips were against her buttocks, his hands on either side of her head, his chest flush to her back.

Ginny realised that his head was right beside hers, and that they were both looking straight ahead, as though in a moment of startling clarity.

"What are we doing?" His voice was rasping in her ear, but she didn't have time to answer because then he moved.

It felt like she was burning away a part of herself, that she was being opened up after years of being closed tight, an oyster shell, a locked box. Draco Malfoy was forging a new path—right there, right between her shaking thighs—and he was doing so absolutely relentlessly. His thrusts were not fast but were so deep that on the first real plunge Ginny unstuck her mouth and cried out in a double-syllable caw, and she could feel him _smile_ above her, his fingers tightening in the dirt.

Her nipples were rubbing against the ground, the moss, and were blazing direct lines down to her clitoris, to her vaginal walls, and she was tight around him. He was panting in her ear, breathing hard across her cheek, her face.

When he dug his knees into the earth even harder, and thrust forward, she couldn't help herself.

"_Draco_."

She cried his name out into the night and the forest, and he swore, hissed filthy words into her ear, and increased his pace twofold, barreling into her relentlessly, as though to some unheard drumbeat—maybe the tattoo of her own heart.

She wasn't speaking, not coherent words, but she was making little sounds every time his hips connected with the flesh of her buttocks, the pleasured echoes of them ringing around the two of them, and Ginny felt like the forest was _watching_, urging them on, sharing in their pleasure—

One of his hands snapped up to her neck from the dirt, and she could feel the earth streaking across her throat, marking her as he grabbed at her, his teeth clicking at the top of her ear. She closed her eyes and felt him against her.

When he pulled out, she let out a sound of preternatural anger, but then his hands were on her hips, and he was turning her over, landing between her thighs, sliding back into her roughly and rapidly.

Ginny could feel the dirt on her breasts now trapped between their bodies, the sweat of their skins turning into a mud that streaked down the sides of her ribcage in whorls and lines.

When she reached up to grab at his hair, she smeared the earth across his cheekbone, across his forehead.

His hands were on her shoulders, holding her in place for each of his demanding, deepened thrusts, and in the darkness of the trees he looked more beautiful than she gave him credit for, completely otherworldly, some sort of fey thing.

She liked that, liked that it felt as though they didn't have names—not here, not now, not as his cock was so hard inside of her, her hands tight in his hair as he rode her into the ground, her back scratched with twigs and stones.

"I'm coming," she breathed, and then all of a sudden she was, her legs so tight around his waist that his movement was hindered, her whole body convulsing just from between her thighs, the heat of it roiling up her chest in waves of extreme, extreme pleasure. And then his voice was wet and shouting against her neck, and she could feel him maybe try to pull out in time but just unable to with the sweet clenching of her own body, and he was coming inside of her in thick and hot swells.

He didn't collapse onto her—instead held her beneath him by pushing his hips forward even more, pinning her head to the ground by kissing her, thrusting his strong tongue inside of her own mouth, and she swore she could taste the dirt.

When his hips finally stopped moving spasmodically, his full weight collapsing onto her body, she exhaled shakily, her breath ruffling the hair above his ear.

"What are we doing?" He repeated the question he had asked her prior, his mouth muffled by the skin of her neck, by the earth, and Ginny relaxed her legs from around his hips, juddered uncontrollably when the last after-shocks of her orgasm whispered through her, like an arrow from between her legs.

"That was so good," she replied, deliberately ending his questioning train of thought. There would always be time for that—the questioning the fact that two prior-almost-enemies had just fucked each other into the forest floor, were now streaked with dirt, looked like pan-Celtic deities in their mussed and painted states. There would always be time for that questioning, and she didn't want to deal with that, not right now.

As he pulled out of her, she winced.

"Are you sore?" His voice was a murmur, as though the trees were a church he dared not disturb.

"Yes," she replied. "Yes." And then she kissed him again, feeling his semen damp on her high inner thighs, and she remembered the fact that people were said to get pregnant on Beltane, and for a second a different future life flashed before her eyes.

And then it was gone, silvery, in a flash, and he was awkwardly helping her up, torn between averting his eyes from her sex-used body, and staring at the lushness of her breasts, the fingers—_his_ fingers—of mud around her ribcage. He somehow did both, and Ginny smiled, blushed futilely in the darkness, looked around desperately for her top, felt like they were both fifteen years old, like the influence of the night and the forest had passed.

They couldn't find her top. Draco had suggested that she pull the skirt up to fashion a sort of dress, and then he had tied his shirt around her waist to make a belt, marvelling silently at how slender she was, quietly measuring the span of her hips in the distances of his fingers and thumbs. She had watched him, watched the muted light reflecting hazily off of his bared chest.

"Everyone will know," she had said, her voice hushed, and she had looked pointedly at the nail marks on his shoulders, the streaks of saliva mixed with earth that were across his cheeks, his neck, the lines of his stomach.

He had looked at her closely for a moment, and then spoke.

"Fuck them."

And when she kissed him, she tasted the sweet grit of dirt.


End file.
